Music, Tech and Regulations

The Internet is such an amazing phenomenon because it’s not just a new playing field, but a new kind of field. The possibilities are virtually limitless.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because everyone has different tastes in music, right? Some people (like myself) have such broad tastes that standard radio stations only serve satisfactory fare a small fraction of the time. Sirius and XM are a step in the right directions, but only the Internet could allow for stations (feeds) for niches like Heavy Metal Hair Bands of the 80s or Prince and His Purpleness’s Proteges.

Frameworks like Shoutcast and products like Winamp make this totally feasible. That’s when you start to get excited. Well, that is until the U.S. Copyright Office comes in with this goobly-gook. Seems like RIAA has more reach than we gave them credit for. Maybe Queensryche said it best with Revolution Calling. If not revolution, at least some changes are needed before John Doe could broadcast his favorite tunes.

The good news? Some day we’ll all remember a time when we couldn’t do personal broadcasting.